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Are Congressional Democrats Out to Get Obama?

By Eric Etheridge April 1, 2009 5:48 pmApril 1, 2009 5:48 pm

What’s everyone linking to this week? Jonathan Chait’s article, “Why The Left Can’t Govern,” in the New Republic. Eyal Press at the Nation called it “the must-read in this week’s news magazines,” and most other linkers have been complimentary as well.

Chait’s thesis is that the “Democrats in Congress, and especially in the Senate,” represent the greatest threat to Obama’s agenda.

At a time when the country desperately needs a coherent response to the array of challenges it faces, the congressional arm of the Democratic Party remains mired in fecklessness, parochialism, and privilege. Obama has made mistakes . . . Yet the constant recurrence of legislative squabbling and drift suggests a deeper problem than any characterological or tactical failures by these presidents: a congressional party that is congenitally unable to govern.

Chait holds up North Dakota Senator Kent Conrad, among others, as example A of these problems:

The first sign of how the Senate would respond came on February 27, when Kent Conrad, the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, gave an interview to CNBC. Conrad listed three objections to Obama’s budget. First, he opposed a provision to limit tax deductions for high-income earners. Second, he opposed a new cap on crop subsidies to farmers who take in more than $500,000 per year. And, third, he upbraided Obama for not doing more to reduce the budget deficit.

You might think a performance like this–demanding that Obama do more to reduce the deficit while simultaneously opposing his deficit-reducing measures–would have turned Conrad into a punch line. Instead, it launched him as a symbol of fiscal rectitude and encouraged fellow Democrats to follow in his hypocritical wake. Numerous Democrats have since stepped forward to join what news reports have accurately described as a “revolt” against Obama’s budget.

Chait also identifies the “dysfunction of the Senate” as an issue, one that “Democrats are especially susceptible to”:

Over the last three decades, the filibuster, once a rare weapon used to express unusually strong objections, has dramatically expanded and turned into a routine, 60-vote supermajority requirement. During the same time period, the Senate has developed a new, anonymous one-person filibuster called a “hold.” The clubby traditions of the Senate have allowed these new practices to expand unchallenged. “The always individual-oriented Senate,” writes Ornstein, “has become even more indulgent of the demands of each of its 100 egotists.”

The problem for the Democrats, says Chait, is that there is a way around the filibuster — a process called reconciliation — but “many Democrats, alas, are far more squeamish than their GOP colleagues about deploying this tool.”

Two other issues make Congressional Democrats trouble for the president: first, by temperament and custom they rarely operate with the “parliamentary-style cohesion Republicans managed under Bush,” which he could count on to push through his agenda. Second, because Democrats represent such a diverse constituency, there are internal conflicts that the Republicans mostly avoid. Or, as Chait puts it, the “the influence of business and the rich unites Republicans and splits Democrats.”

Ron Brownstein at the Atlantic says that Chait “gets a lot of things right” in his article, but “omits, as the Left usually does, two other critical elements of the relationship between Congressional Democrats and Obama.”

First, Democrats are far more united under Obama than they have been in the past; as we noted earlier this year, Congressional Democrats are voting together at a rate greatly exceeding their unity as recently as under Bill Clinton, much less under Jimmy Carter. It’s easy to forget that no Senate Democrats and only seven House Democrats voted against the final passage of Obama’s stimulus plan; by contrast, six Senate and 41 House Democrats voted against final passage of Clinton’s economic plan in 1993. Yes, Congressional Democrats are now requiring changes in the Obama budget, but it’s also easy to forget that Republican defections (albeit from a smaller number of members) forced Bush to trim his tax cuts in both 2001 and 2003.

Brownstein’s second “critical element” is that “Chait ignores the single largest reason why Democrats don’t display as much party loyalty as Republicans: the Democratic coalition is inherently more diverse and less homogenous than the Republican coalition.”

Democrats today are competing across a much wider terrain than Republicans–both demographically and geographically. On Election Day, that’s a great asset. That broader reach is why Obama won nearly 80 more Electoral College votes than Bush did even in his 2004 highpoint, and why Democrats today enjoy larger majorities in both the House and Senate than Republicans did at any point during their 12 years of control. But for Democrats, the price of that broader electoral reach is more ideological diversity than Republicans operate with; that’s the principal reason Democrats cannot expect to consistently match the level of uniformity that Republicans achieved during their years in the majority. And that’s the overriding fact missing from Chait’s analysis (as well as the similar indictments of Congress from other liberal voices). During their years in the majority, the vast majority of Congressional Republicans operated with similar political incentives and ideological inclinations since they were chosen by broadly similar electorates. That’s simply less true for Democrats.

“This diversity,” Brownstein adds, “could–should–be the Democrats’ greatest political asset–especially against a GOP that has, over the past 15 years, increasingly defined itself as a ridigly conservative, excessively Southernized party that is, on too many days, more a club than a coalition.”

But if the Left operates with unrealistic expectations about its ability to dictate the Democratic agenda, and if it views efforts to accommodate party centrists (much less moderate Republican perspectives inside and outside of Congress) as a form of betrayal, the Democrats’ diversity could become their downfall.

Other commentators felt that, if anything, Chait was too soft on the structural problems of the Senate. At the American Prospect, Scott Lemieux said that “while there’s some truth to [Chait’s] argument that ‘[t]he Senate is a broken branch,’ I don’t agree that its inherent problems have symmetrical partisan effects.”

The fact that it’s a lot easier to stop things than to get things done definitely favors conservative interests in the long run. . . . But more problematic is the gross malapportionment of the Senate, which strongly favors reactionary interests. There are Blue Dogs with a slavish adherence to business interests in the House too, but they’re much less of a problem there because urban liberals are more fairly represented (and because the rules give much less leverage to a smaller minority of conservative Dems) .

This isn’t to say that Chait’s argument isn’t useful; the Senate was a really bad idea, but we’re stuck with it. The only way to get around it is to create and enforce norms that make obstructionist conservative Dems as politically toxic as possible. But, structurally, conservative obstructionism is going to be the rule, not the exception, in the Senate. It’s what the branch was designed to do, and it does it all too well.

At the Washington Monthly, Publius was similarly focused on the structural issue: “The problem with the Senate is the Senate itself rather than the individual Senators.”

The fact that the Senate kills and waters down legislation is no accident — it’s the whole point. Legislative failure is written into the DNA of our constitutional system. It’s a great system for blocking ambitious legislative changes, but it’s a horrible one for enacting major national reform. Hell, African-Americans in the South couldn’t vote 100 years after the Civil War — or even publicly eat with whites — largely because of the Senate. As Sanford Levinson’s most excellent book illustrates, our Constitution simply has a lot of very dumb provisions. The Senate is one of them. . . .

[W]ho knows — maybe Obama’s ambitious agenda will be wildly successful, thus rehabilitating the Senate. But Senate reform should be added to the longer-term progressive agenda. Indeed, the other big-ticket items on that agenda — things like health care reform and cap-and-trade — might not be possible without it. I guess we’re about to find out.

And yet, this is why Obama was elected. To bridge the partisan divide, not only with Republicans but with conservative Democrats as well. If the Democrats are indeed divided between urban and business interests, then it seems to me that he has two options: (1) to play the class warfare/populist card between business including Wall St. and the average Joe struggling to pay their tuition and health care bills; or (2) he must convince business that the reforms he wishes to make like universal health care and affordable college tuition are also in business’s interest. That may mean splitting conservative Democrats from their benefactors in business by going up against his own party members and painting them as obstructionists.

Obama ran and was elected on a bipartisan platform, this should not be confused with appeasement.

“I’m not a member of any organized political party. I’m a Democrat” – Will Rogers

“You might think a performance like this–demanding that Obama do more to reduce the deficit while simultaneously opposing his deficit-reducing measures–would have turned Conrad into a punch line. Instead, it launched him as a symbol of fiscal rectitude”

This says a lot more about the ineptitude of the CNBC interviewer and the milquetoast media than it does about the Democrats.

Drift in the Democratic party is a result of the drift of President Obama.

President Obama has stressed bipartisanship and not put forth a strong Democratic program.

The President gives full support to his Secretary of the Treasury who was an architect of the save the banks plan of the previous Republican administration. Saving the banks at the cost of the taxpayers has not been a rallying call of the Democratic party.

The stimulus program contains a 5 billions dollars program for testings that continues the charade of NCLB, and contains more dollars for Charter schools, and performance pay for teachers.

At one point President Obama will have to recognize that as the President in a Democratic administration he alone is responsible for any drift in support by fellow Democrats in Congress.

The American right is accustomed to a dictatorial executive who issues commands to the legislative branch — and to legislators who fall into lock step behind the “commander.”

Democrats are more inclined to govern as the Founders intended — i.e., collaboration between the executive and legislative branches — with plenty of debate and input. Seeing this, the right screams, “They don’t know how to govern!” To which I would add: “They don’t know how to govern … as dictators and Nazis do!” Yes, indeed, thank heaven!

well they are only out to feather their own nests, see themselves on TV and get reelected.
but they will get president obama.
why?
because they are led by some of the most incompetent
leaders of all time- speaker pelosi, senator reid and
senator kerry, “the axis of weasel.”

Obama seeks new regulation or re-regulation of the financial sector, and he may have some success. But who among politicians, especially senators, talks about reform of the Senate? The necessity of a super majority vote in the Senate to enact legislation and the one-person, anonymous hold on bills is an insult to democracy. If we don’t get both kinds of reform, this country is in for a steady decline.

These are times that prove Proudhon’s formulation: “The fecundity of the unexpected far exceeds the statesman’s prudence.” Americans should enjoy the moment of victory for just that long, a moment, and after that, look beyond the war and consider that their country cannot for very long assert its authority, moral or military, unless it can bring its realities at home into closer alignment with its persona in the world.

The Senate is not only at the heart of the problem, but the emergence of it’s ability to obstruct legislation through the new supermajority requirement is at odds with the pattern of non-representative houses in other legislatures.

In the British Parliament, the Lords cannot stop legislation, but only delay it for reconsideration by the Commons.

A modest reform proposal would require that at a specified time (say one or two months) after a bill has been passed by one house, the bill must be brought to a vote in the other house. This would still allow a determined minority in one house to delay intemperate action, but would not allow it to block the will of the majority.

In the long run, legislators must heed the public cry not only for action but for accountability when it comes to the billions in banking bailouts. When new bailouts seem essential, they may not pass unless preceded by enactment of serious regulations — and might not help in the absence of important regulations.

Regulations may also be the only way for Europe and the United States to come to any semblance of workable agreements for fighting off a world depression.

The most important variable in the equation is that it is the congress that passes the bill – The House and th Senate. Did Obama’s budgeteers consult the congress members in preparing this budget? Most likely, Orszag is a brilliant economis, what with a Ph.D. fro the London School of Economics. But did he get it blessed by the key senators before making it public? That’s the lesson I learnt in my management career. i also have a Ph.D. and my Boss once told me that, “Pete, I know you are smart. But others must buy into your proposal. Just because you have a Ph.D. does not mean they will accept it. You need to socialize it prior to going for a formal approval”. It does not look like that happened. that also shows a lack of management experience on Obama’s part. Hope they learn manageemnt procedures.

Maybe the crucial problem here is not a “failing” Senate, or a “diverse” Democratic party, but an inexperienced, socialist President who was voted in on charisma and ethnicity. Obama’s petty mistakes and risky, half-minded proposals are, not surprisingly, being questioned even by members of his own party. Within a couple weeks, the President made an insulting joke about Special Olympians on live TV, and then returned the outstanding thoughtfulness of the Prime Minster of England with a DVD set. Along the way, he’s suggested negotiating with members of the Taliban, and promised $787 billion in economic stimulus… that will put us trillions of dollars in debt.

Obama is running rampant, and even Democrats are getting dizzy. If they are going to be expected to back their leader, their leader may need to work on gaining more serious respect. Obama needs to get some experience behind that charming smile, and needs to walk that party line, not just talk of unity.

Running up deficits and spending did not lead us out of the Great Depression. Obama’s huge deficit budget won’t get us out of a recession either. We will eventually come out of it and economists will once again prove that government does not create jobs but just moves money around and upsets the speed of an economies recovery.
Even leading democrats are balking at Obama’s deficit spending ways. Democratic Rep. Gene Taylor of Mississippi took a shot at Obama’s budget, saying “change is not running up even bigger deficits that George Bush did.” They know that creating programs that can never die, amassing huge debt, devaluing the dollar and increasing the cost of money through debt financing is not good for America in the long run.

Here’s hoping that Obama takes that “Team Of Rivals” book off his night stand and soon begins to read up on the Great Depression with some titles written by rea world economists. Maybe then he won’t try to triple the Bush Deficits with his planned, 4 year, $5 Trillion dollar gamble using your money..

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The Thread is an in-depth look at how the major news events and controversies of the day are being viewed and debated across the online spectrum. Compiled by Peter Catapano, an editor in The Times’s Opinion section, the Thread is published every Saturday in response to breaking news.